Moon Flower (26 page)

“Well, I never actually saw them myself...”

“Tell ‘
im
, not me.”

Orban turned his face toward Lang. “I didn’t see them myself. But there was a carriage that went along the Corn Market Street that caused a bit of a stir. It had this black animal sticking its head out the window and making a noise, starting all the
gloks
off. And one boy I heard who was there said there was a woman in it too. Dark hair, kind of red.”

“That’s them,” Lang said, nodding.

“An’ you said they were comin’ from Soliki’s?” the innkeeper checked.

“Well, I don’t know that for sure. But I did hear tell this morning that some Terrans were staying with Soliki these last two nights.”

The innkeeper looked at Lang. “Soliki the draper’s. In the square where the monument is. You know it?”

Lang spread his hands. “I only got here a few days ago.”

“‘E don’t know where it is,” the innkeeper relayed to Orban.

Orban scratched his chin. “A few days? Why are they in such a rush to leave?”

“‘E don’t know where Soliki’s is,” the innkeeper said again.

“Do you think we’ll have a whole world of them coming here?”

Lang took a Cyrenean coin from a pocket in his tunic and slid it along the table to the innkeeper. “That’s to cover one for him, on me, when he gets back,” he said.

Orban looked mildly grieved. “Oh, I’ll take you to Soliki’s,” he said. “You didn’t have to do that, sir. But I don’t mind if I do. Thank you very much.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

The name of the place the carriage arrived at late in the day after descending into a steep-sided valley was Doriden. It consisted of four main stone buildings situated around a central quadrangle, standing beside a deeply cut stream, and several smaller buildings around the outside and across the stream, that appeared to have been added later. Two bridges spanned the stream to connect the two parts of the institution, and standing between them on the opposite bank was a mill house with a waterwheel. Beyond the outbuildings on the far side were vegetable plots, a fruit orchard, and paddocks with various types of animals. The hillside above was planted with rows of plants that could have been some kind of corn or vine.

Shearer’s NIDA translated its function as a “monastery of learning.” From what he could make of the answers he got from Chev, it didn’t confer diplomas or degrees, and so probably didn’t qualify as a “university,” but nevertheless had sufficiently strong connotations with more than just the process of learning to be let off as an “academy” or a “college.” The NIDA’s choice of “monastery” seemed odd, since Cyrene — or at least, the Yocalan part of it — didn’t boast much to speak of in the way of structured religion. More questioning by Shearer produced the impression that what the NIDA had latched on to was the concept of dedication to seeking truth and understanding to help make the world a better place.

This was reinforced later in the evening, when the four arrivals sat down at one of the long tables in the communal dining hall for dinner with a member of the staff called Blanborel, who had greeted them, and several others. The guests had been expected as a result of Chev’s talking with the people from Doriden who had ridden ahead the previous day, and had found rooms prepared and baths heated for them to clean up after their day of traveling.

“Other people produced this food I’m eating and the clothes I’m wearing,” Blanborel explained. “And then there are those who can make a house that stays up or a boat that doesn’t leak. And those are not the kinds of things I’m best at or have any great fondness for, to be honest. But those things all require work. And through better understanding of how the world works...” he made a sweeping gesture that took in Shearer, Jerri, and Uberg, “which Chev tells us is what you do in life, we try to find ways in which work can achieve better results. So that is our claim to worth and respect.” Blanborel made the silent “Ow” that was the Cyrenean equivalent of a wink and lowered his voice behind a raised hand. “At least, that is what we have to say. And it’s true as far as it goes. But if you really want to know the truth, sheer curiosity plays as big a part. It does for me, anyway. I just
have
to know. Isn’t it the same for you Terrans? I mean, really — deep down inside. Eh?”

He was large and rotund, with a fleshy, ruddy face, graying beard, and shaggy hair. After the NIDA’s determination of “monastery,” Shearer couldn’t help thinking of him as the Abbot. He even had a cowl-like hood thrown back from the long jacket that he was wearing.

“That wouldn’t do for me,” Chev, eating heartily, told the table.

“Different people everywhere think in their own way,” Uberg said. Since there were only enough NIDA sets to equip Chev, Blanborel, and a colleague of Blanborel’s called Zek, the Terrans either spoke through them, or else slowly in pidgin sentences that mixed in bits of Yocalan. In addition, some of them had a grasp of rudimentary English, perhaps picked up from other travelers.

Darco, a young man sitting next to Blanborel, who could have been some kind of student and had been listening intently, leaned forward to address the Terrans. “Tell me, is it true,” he said. “The far distance stars like from where you are come from.” He used the point of the knife that he was eating with to separate out a seed grain suspended in a smear of sauce on the edge of his plate. “There is your Earth star, yes? Or is maybe like Henkyl. Because is said Henkyl star also. Just more near.”

“Okay,” Shearer agreed.

“Then next near other star same size is where Revo city. True is this, yes?”

“That’s about it.” Shearer nodded.

“But Earth star is not next near. Is far away very more. Maybe like other side Yocala. True is this, yes?”

“Right on.” Shearer nodded again.

“Amazing,” Blanborel said, shaking his head..

“Don’t worry about it. It still amazes us too,” Jerri told him. Darco sat back and exchanged mystified looks with colleagues who had been helping each other to follow.

One of them put a question to Blanborel, who relayed, “You come here in ships that are bigger than the bird-ships that land at your camp by Revokanta.” That was the name of the lake east of Revo city.

“You can see them crossing the sky at night,” Chev put in.

“They don’t have sails like ships or wings like birds. And anyway, they must travel much faster than sails or wings could make. So what do they have?”

Shearer and Uberg looked at each other helplessly. How did one begin explaining a Heim drive? Then Shearer remembered the stream outside, that flowed through the middle of Doriden. “Imagine that the space between the stars... the whole universe that you see... is like the water that a fish in the stream down by the mill swims in,” he said. They all watched him intently. “The fish only knows the water. That is its universe. To get to, let’s say Revokanta, it would have to swim down, out to the ocean, and around through all the water that exists between Doriden and there. But now think of the bird who can rise above that universe and fly there outside the water.... Our ship is like the bird.” He looked around, but it didn’t seem he had quite got the point across. The questions were not exactly pouring back in a flood.

Darco came in. “I think the question was more what makes the...” He looked around, asking for the word.

“Force,” Blanborel supplied.

“Okay, the force that pushes the ships.” Darco held up a cupped hand and blew into it, at the same time moving it away. “Like with the sail ship, is the wind. Because you don’t have bird-horses, no?” He grinned and the others laughed.

“It’s an invisible force,” Uberg tried. He picked up a bread bowl from the table and rocked it up and down on the palm of a hand as if weighing it. “Like the force that you can feel pulling things down toward the ground. But the one we produce is a lot stronger.”

“Do you mean electricity?” Zek asked. Shearer blinked in surprise. Zek looked at Blanborel, and then both of them beamed at the Terrans proudly, as if it had been a secret that they had been waiting for the right moment to reveal.

“Oh yes, we are familiar with it here,” Blanborel said. “It’s not all wind, water, and animals, you know.”

“Well, yes, electrical forces do come into it,” Shearer said. He hoped he wasn’t going to be asked just how strong they were. He had once calculated the relative strengths of the gravitational and electrical forces — thirty-nine orders of magnitude — was about the same as a millionth of a millimeter to a hundred thousand times the size of the known universe.

However, Zek went on, “Although I admit we haven’t worked out how to put it to much practical use yet. But I’m sure that will all come in its own time.”

Blanborel took in the expressions on the faces of his three alien guests with evident satisfaction. “We had intended to show you around tomorrow to see some of the things we’re doing here,” he informed them. “But since you seem interested, we could make it this evening, after we finish eating, if you wish.”

They interrogated each other silently, each nodding in turn. “Yes,” Uberg answered for all of them. “I think we’d like that very much.”

“Well, let’s eat up, then,” Blanborel said, waving at the table.

Zek turned his head to the students who were with them. “And any of you can join us too,” he told them. “I’d recommend it. This isn’t a chance that you get every day. And it might be some of the best education you’ll get this year.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

The mixed party of Cyreneans and Terrans crossed the stream via one of the bridges and followed a path to the entrance of a long, low building of adobe-like walls with a peculiarly curved sloping roof, one end of which abutted the mill house. Nim had already found new admirers and was being entertained elsewhere. Inside, the stone floors, heavy timber framing, and large spaces connecting through wide openings gave a first impression of a large stable or farm building. But the rooms they passed through turned out to be workshops, with tool racks, benches fitted with vises, shelves of jars and bottles, tables with burners and assorted glassware, and a number of ovens and furnaces. Shearer was able to identify several hydraulic devices and a piece of clockwork of some kind that seemed to be experimental setups. In addition there were various systems of levers and pulleys, a crank-driven piston and cylinder that looked like a pump, and other mechanisms whose function was not immediately apparent. Although quiet now, the place had the look about it of being busy during the day. It was a long way from Berkeley and belonged to another age, but Shearer had a feeling of being at home.

Zek led the way through to the mill house at the end of the building. It contained not a mill as such, they could now see, but a power plant. The main shaft from the waterwheel drove an open system of metal and wooden gearing, from which belts running on pulleys turned three secondary shafts. The secondary shafts were running faster than the input shaft and connected to drum assemblies sprouting levers and screw adjusters that were clearly clutches, each having an output shaft that was at present stationary.

One of the output shafts went to a set of vertical slides ten feet or so high constraining a cylindrical weight to drop onto an anvil — a powered drop hammer. Another drove a reciprocating saw moved by a crank. But the setup that Zek led the group to stood apart to one side. It was in the form of a circular metal yoke three feet or so in diameter, standing on a sturdy wooden plinth. Four squat pole pieces at right angles projected inward from the yoke, their inner faces concave so that together they defined a circular central space. Inside the space was a rotor mounted on bearings, separated from the pole pieces by a narrow gap. The pole pieces and the rotor were wound with thick metal turns that looked like copper. Nearby was a wooden board mounting hefty brass terminals and copper breaker switches. Zek and Blanborel looked at the visitors inquiringly. Shearer smiled in undisguised delight and admiration.

“I suppose you know what it is?” Jerri said to him.

“Almost out of a Faraday museum. A basic DC dynamo — or a motor if you run it backward.”

Inwardly, Shearer was surprised at just how familiar it seemed, and by its advancement conceptually. He had a suspicion there was more than a little Terran influence here. The space beyond where the machine stood was an entire electrical lab, with large earthenware and glass pots containing metal forms immersed in liquids — obviously primitive storage cells — more windings and mechanisms, and a bench with wires, springs, gauges, and a balance, on which some kind of measurements seemed to be in progress. Muttering had broken out among the students. A few who were evidently conversant with the work were explaining things to the others — and evidently enjoying the opportunity to show off a little.

“My talking hat didn’t understand the name you used,” Blanborel told Shearer. “I assume it was a Terran.”

“A famous person in our history,” Shearer replied. “He discovered similar things.”

“You mean concerning electricity?”

“Yes.”

“How long ago would that have been?”

Shearer did a quick mental calculation. “Between a hundred and a hundred-twenty of your years.”

“Fascinating!”

“Are you going to get it going for us?” Uberg asked.

“Of course,” Blanborel replied. “But that’s Zek’s department.... Zek?”

Zek was already moving forward. “I was afraid they weren’t going to ask,” he said.

Chev, looking mystified, gestured at Shearer appealingly. “The shaft from the wheel outside turns those wheels, and they work the hammer and the saw. That, I can see. And yes it’s very ingenious. But you’re more interested in this bird cage thing.” He waved at the dynamo. “I don’t understand what it is.”

Before Shearer could answer, Zek worked a couple of levers on the clutch controlling the dynamo drive shaft. To the accompaniment of clunking and whirring, the rotor of the dynamo began turning. As Zek eased one of the levers forward, the rotor gained speed until it was turning as fast as the input shaft to the clutch. The knowledgeable students were giving a commentary in Yocalan to the others and seemed to be coaxing them to come closer, but the neophytes to this arcane art appeared less sure.